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Legislative House, Santa Christina
Legislative House is the formal name of the building used to house the state legislature of the Georgeland state of West Mainland, in the state capital of Santa Christina. Legislative House has also been used to house the Colonial Assembly of Georgeland, the Parliament of Georgeland and the Mainland state legislature. The building is located in the centre of Santa Christina at 211 Empire Street. . . History Colonial period Construction on the building began in June 1874. Georgeland's colonial Governor, Sir Charles Fox, laid the foundation stone. The building was commissioned by the Colonial Chief Minister, Sir Philip Cooper as part of a scheme to redesign Georgeland's colonial capital to be more in line with other Imperial capitals. The legislature, the Colonial Assembly, had previously met in a building now referred to as Weston Colonial House on Nicholls Street. An existing structure, a former barracks for Imperial forces in Weston, had occupied the site when construction was approved. The barracks' former location is marked by a series of plaques in the ground inside the building and its environs. The Chief Colonial Architect, Howard Smith, designed the building in Romanesque Revival style, popular in the colony at the time. A large statue of Queen Victoria was erected immediately outside the main street entrance. The statue remained until 1943, when it was removed and placed inside the grounds, where it remains today. The building was formally opened by Governor Fox on March 24, 1877. Ironically, Cooper had left office by this point and the first colonial administration to occupy Legislative House (the name was chosen by the Assembly the previous year) was that of Francis Knowles. Federal parliament In the period leading up to independence, there was much assumption that Weston, the colonial capital, would remain the national capital if Georgeland became a self-governing dominion. This proved correct for the first two decades of independence. In 1890, an agreement was reached that a new capital would be chosen but that Weston would serve as capital until a new location was found. To that end, the new federal parliament convened in Legislative House in 1891 and remained there until 1911, when government was formally moved to Topstad. During this period, the Mainland state legislature met in Colonial House. The building was regularly described as 'inadequate' for the needs of federal parliamentarians. As the Colonial Assembly had been unicameral, there was no accomodation for the Senate, forcing Senators to meet in a converted committee room for twenty years. The library was small and Spartan and MPs continually claimed of a lack of security - incidents have been recorded of members of the public being able to wander into the office of the Speaker and the Prime Minister without being challenged. These inadequacies were noted by the designers of the new Parliament building in Topstad to avoid the problems in the future. State legislature of Mainland After 1911, the unicameral Mainland legislature took over the building and remained there for eighty-nine years. The building was expanded several times during this period - the most notable addition was the Executive Wing behind the main facade, to accomodate the Ministry, in the 1960s. Modern use After 2000, when Mainland subdivided into East and West, Legislative House continued to be used by the West Mainland legislature. In 2002, the Santa Christina Herald reported that the building was too large for the new, smaller legislature and that the government was considering leasing office space. Instead, several government departments now occupy areas of the building. Category:Georgeland Category:Buildings